It’s a small world

Gary Clarke gets creative in the back garden with flowers and insects

Gary Clarke is a selftaught photographer who started out in 2012, as a means of unwinding from his job in IT. He is now at the stage of slowly moving away from the day job, though, and describes himself as a semi-professional photographer. His favoured photography genres are landscape and seascapes.

Following the rules during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 has meant that Gary, like many of us, hasn’t had the opportunity to travel around the UK – but it did provide a great opportunity to try some new techniques.

He recently upgraded his macro kit to include a Sigma 150mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM macro lens plus a Sigma 1.4x teleconverter and a Nikon SS-MS1 Close-Up Speedlight Kit. This allows him to stay further away from bugs, with a focal length of 210mm. Shooting with either a Nikon Z 7 or a D850 allows Gary to utilise Nikon’s Focus Shift feature, more commonly called focus-stacking.

The image above was taken with the camera placed on a tripod, then set to take 20 Focus Shift shots. After the shoot was completed, the images were uploaded into Lightroom for batch-processing, then exported into Helicon Focus to produce a single, super-sharp image. garyclarkephotography.com